My great-grandmother knew things. She had a deep understanding of how herbs, spices, oils, and the most ordinary kitchen ingredients could heal, beautify, and restore. None of it was written down. When she died, much of what she carried went with her.
I started this book by turning to my grandmother - my paati, to record what her mom had passed down for her to remember. My grandmother knew a fraction of what her mother knew, and this knowledge barely trickled down to me. Passing down information by word of mouth seemed to work until my great-grandmother’s generation. However, in today’s world, where information can be accessed so quickly, anything being passed down by word of mouth is at risk of disappearing.
What began as an attempt to preserve what remained of my family’s knowledge soon grew into a larger archive of rituals, memories and oral histories in the most authentic, unfiltered way possible. Over six years, I gathered more than 140 rituals by talking to my family, their friends, and others who still led lives in which natural beauty and wellness rituals held a dominant place.
I began taking notes because I was watching the same rituals my paati taught me reappear abroad as luxury wellness: turmeric lattes, hair oiling, aromatic use of sandalwood and vetiver - often stripped of where they came from, and sometimes unrecognisable from the practice they began as. This dissonance was one of the main reasons I wanted to document these rituals in their most authentic, unfiltered form.
What surprised me along the way was how progressive these traditions were on their own terms. Beauty and self-care were never gendered the way they are now. The body and its care were not separate from food, prayer, or the seasons. The fact that contemporary wellness is only now arriving at these ideas and calling them new - is, I think, part of the same dissonance.
This book was photographed across Tamil Nadu and Kerala - in Chettinad courtyards, in the Kerala backwaters, and in old-school Bangalore. It is clothbound so it lasts. It is dedicated to the women who kept this knowledge alive, often without knowing they were keeping anything at all.
Love, Paati is a granddaughter's record - and hopefully, one day, I'll get to pass it down to my own grandchildren.
